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The Noun Phrase

Recognize a noun phrase when you see one.

A noun phrase includes a noun—a person, place, or thing—and the modifiers which distinguish it. You can find the noun dog in a sentence, for example, but you don’t know which canine the writer means until you consider the entire noun phrase: that dog, Aunt Audrey’s dog, the dog on the sofa, the neighbor’s dog that chases our cat, the dog digging in the new flower bed.

Modifiers can come before or after the noun. Ones that come before might include articles, possessive nouns, possessive pronouns, adjectives, and/or participles.

Prepositional phrases: a dog on the loose, the dog in the front seat, the dog behind the fence

Adjective clauses: the dog that chases cats, the dog that looks lost, the dog that won the championship

Participle phrases: the dog whining for a treat, the dog clipped at the grooming salon, the dog walked daily

Infinitives: the dog to catch, the dog to train, the dog to adopt

Less frequently, a noun phrase will have a pronoun as its base—a word like we,everybody, etc.—and the modifiers which distinguish it. Read these examples:

We who were green with envy

We = subject pronoun; who were green with envy = modifier.

Someone intelligent

Someone = indefinite pronoun; intelligent = modifier.

No one important

No one = indefinite pronoun; important = modifier.

The Noncount Noun

Recognize a noncount noun when you see one.

Nouns name people, places, and things. Many nouns have both a singular and plural form:a surfer/surfers, a restaurant/restaurants, a pickle/pickles. Some nouns, however, have only a singular form; you cannot add a number to the front or an s to the end of these words. This group of nouns is called noncount. Read the following examples:

After two months of rainstorms, Fred carries his umbrella everywhere in anticipation of more bad weather.

Rainstorms = count noun; weather = noncount noun.

Because Big Toe Joe has ripped all four chairs with his claws, Diane wants to buy new furniture and find the cat another home.

Chairs = count noun; furniture = noncount noun.

When Mrs. Russell postponed the date of the research paper, smiles lit up the faces of her students, filling the room with happiness.

Smiles = count noun; happiness = noncount noun.

Because the beautiful Josephine will help Pablo with his calculusassignments, he never minds the homework from Dr. Ribley’s class.

Assignments = count noun; homework = noncount noun.

Know the different categories of noncount nouns.

The chart below illustrates the different types of noncount nouns. Remember that these categories include other nouns that are count. For example, lightning, a natural event [one of the categories], is noncount, but hurricane, a different natural event, is a count noun. When you don’t know what type of noun you have, consult a dictionary that provides such information.

Know how to indicate number with noncount nouns.

Thunder, a noncount noun, cannot have an s added at the end. You can, however, lie awake in bed counting the number of times you hear thunder boom during a storm.

When you want to indicate number with a noncount word, you have two options. First, you can put of in front of the noncount word—for example, of thunder—and then attach the resulting prepositional phrase to an appropriate count word.

Kristina heard seven claps of thunder.

A second option is to make the noncount noun an adjective that you place before a count noun. Then you could write a sentence like this:

Thunderheads filled the sky.

Here are some more examples:

Noncount Noun

Countable Version

Advice

pieces of advice

Homework

homework assignments

Bread

loaves of bread, slices of bread

Smoke

puffs of smoke, plumes of smoke

Software

software applications

Wine

bottles of wine, glasses of wine

Snow

snow storms, snowflakes, snow drifts

Cloth

bolts of cloth, yards of cloth

Dirt

piles of dirt, truckloads of dirt

Understand that some nouns are both noncount and count.

Sometimes a word that means one thing as a noncount noun has a slightly different meaning if it also has a countable version. Remember, then, that the classifications countand noncount are not absolute.

Time is a good example. When you use this word to mean the unceasing flow of experience that includes past, present, and future, with no distinct beginning or end, thentime is a noncount noun. Read this example:

Time dragged as Simon sat through yet another boring chick flick with his girlfriend Roseanne.

Time = noncount because it has no specific beginning and, for poor Simon, no foreseeable end.

When time refers to a specific experience which starts at a certain moment and ends after a number of countable units [minutes, hours, days, etc.], then the noun is count. Here is an example:

On his last to Disney World, Joe rode Space Mountain twenty-seventimes.

Times = count because a ride on Space Mountain is a measurable unit of experience, one that you can clock with a stopwatch.